Investors put in $16 million more into E-Ink in the latest effort to get the e-book ball rolling.
That brings the total that the small company has raised to $150 million, according to VentureWire. The market, however, has yet to take flight. Everyone loves the idea. E-books don't consume trees and you can carry several books at once. Some believe that college textbooks will go this way.
Still, no one seems to be buying them yet. The most prominent product to use the company's technology is the Sony Reader, an electronic book from the Japanese giant. Sony has sold some, but not a lot of these devices.
"I'd like to sell a hell of a lot more than we're selling," said Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow in an interview in June.
E-books were tried in the 90s. NuvoMedia and SoftBook Press both came out with e-books back then. NuvoMedia aimed itself at consumers and SoftBook aimed at business users. Neither sold well. But, the companies lucked out. Gemstar-TV Guide International bought them both for around $300 million in 2000, when concept companies were selling for premiums.
NuvoMedia founder Martin Eberhard took the money, retired for a while, and then formed Tesla Motors. So something has come out of all of this.
E-Ink was founded in 1997 and grew out of the MIT Media Labs.
A collaboration between military R&D and industrial designers is bringing state-of-the-art PDA technology to Joe Snuffy out on the battlefield.
The Soldier Flex PDA (SFPDA) introduced by Inhand Electronics features flexible display technology with input from industrial design firm Artisent, display technology firm E-Ink and the U.S. Army Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University.
(Credit:
Inhand Electronics)
The PDA offers InHand's PXA270-based Fingertip4 CPU board, along with Ethernet, USB, Bluetooth and keypad interfaces all in a "ruggedized" glass-free package that weighs less than a pound. Best of all, the unique low-power characteristics of electronic paper displays and InHand's patented BatterySmart system keep power consumption at well below a single watt. Battery life runs about six hours, according to the Maryland company.
The device opens up the realm of possibilities for distributing critical battlefield-networked information to infantry combat soldiers on long duration missions, explains Henry Girolamo, SFPDA program manager at the Army's Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center.
That, and having a PDA around should make pulling guard duty a lot more entertaining.
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